In the previous post, we covered the invention process of T3 BPCs and the production of Hybrid Polymers, both required to build T3 cruisers, destroyers and their subsystems. Now it is time to use our BPCs to build the actual hulls and modules.
To build a T3 hull or subsystem, we need a bunch of components very similar to the ones needed for T2 production. All of the T3 cruiser hulls need exactly the same types and amount of components, so let’s have a look at Tengu cruiser hull as an example to see which ones we need:
Looking at the required building materials, we need eight different components, all of them specific to T3 production. Furthermore, we need a small amount of R.A.M – Starship Tech, which we also needed to build T2 ship hulls. There is no need for a T1 hull in case of T3 ship production. The hull fragments were already put into the BPC when we did the reverse engineering step to invent the BPC.
Most components are only used in small quantities, which means that raising your ME value during the BPC invention has only little impact on the build cost. It is therefore more efficient to invent for more runs instead of increasing your ME value.
Let’s have a look at one of the required components, in this case the Electromechanical Interface Nexus:
To build the component we need four different salvage types, which again can only be found in wormholes salvaging sleeper wrecks.
The second ingredient category required are three types of Hybrid Polymers. We covered the build process for these in the first part of this guide.
If we have a look at the other 7 components of the Tengu build, we can see that all build requirements follow the same general pattern. Each needs 2-4 different Hybrid Polymers and 2-6 different wormhole salvage types.
To get your hands on the component BPOs is quite simple, because they are sold by NPC corporations on the market. There are 16 different T3 components in the game and a full set of BPOs goes for 160 million ISK, a little more if you buy them in Jita 4/4. Research times on these are very short and you can get a perfect blueprint set in around 3-4 days depending on skills and location, although savings on ME are very little. In game the BPOs are under the Subsystem Components category, but these are also used to build the T3 hulls.
The second type of T3 hull is the T3 destroyer, which have quite similar build requirements to the T3 cruisers:
The build also requires eight T3 specific components, with four of them used already in the Tengu build. Again all four of the T3 destroyers hulls need exactly the same input materials. I will skip a closer look on the 4 new components since these require the same input material types as the other T3 components, which is a bunch of sleeper salvage and various Hybrid Polymers.
Finally, you can build a total of 48 different T3 subsystems. You can divide these into four general categories, which are Offensive, Defensive, Propulsion and Core. Each category again contains three different subsystems for each of the T3 cruiser hulls. So e.g. there are 3 different Tengu Core modules or 3 different Proteus Propulsion modules.
Each T3 cruiser hull needs four of these subsystem modules (one from every category) to be assembled. Each subsystem works like a rig and changes certain attributes of the hull, but subsystems change the attributes much more compared to rigs. They can allow certain modules like a Covert Ops Cloak to be fitted, provide more fitting slots or give general hull bonuses.
Let’s have a look at the build requirements of a subsystem:
This time we need 6 different T3 components for the build. The first six components will be the same for all 48 subsystems.
The only component that differs for other subsystem categories is the one in the lower right of the screenshot, in this case the Reconfigured Subspace Calibrators. The sixths component is different for every subsystem category, so e.g. all 12 Propulsion subsystems have the same material costs and all 12 Core subsystems have the same requirements too.
That’s pretty much all there is to say about building T3 cruiser and destroyer hulls and T3 subsystems. You will nee the various Hybrid Polymers that we discussed in the last previous part of this guide, a large number of sleeper salvage parts to build the T3 components and an invented BPC. From the components you can build the actual hulls and subsystems with very similar material costs for most of them.
Final Thoughts on T3 Production
If you made it this far, you seem to be really interested in T3 production. Let’s have a look on the build cost compared to the market price by using the IPH build cost calculator. IPH (ISK per Hour) is a third party tool, that helps you calculated prices for all items in Eve by the public market data API that CCP provides. You can download the latest release from here.
There are a lot of variables that define the price of a completed hull or subsystem. Firstly, you can invent the BPC starting from three different ancient relic types for each hull or subsystem. Next, there are the different descriptors that increase the probability of the invention attempt and the number of runs of your BPCs. You also have the choice between building the T3 components yourself, buying the completed component from the market or a mix of both.
Putting all these parameters into IPH results on a massive list of different build option with different profitabilities. For the 48 subsystems, you will get hundreds of different build options and costs for each invention decryptor used. Considering the decriptors, you end up with 1000+ different build options. That’s why I highly recommend to calculate your costs in detail before building anything large scale on the T3 market.
Here are the most profitable subsystems I found for a specific decriptor at the time of writing with the corresponding profit and parameters I used:
T3 subsystem manufacturing prices
There are some subsystems that have a relatively high profit but there are also many that result in massive losses. For many builds buying components on the market is also cheaper than to build them yourself. So be careful what you build and never build too large quantities to not crash the market. If prices suddenly change, you might end up with massive losses if you build too much of one module. The same is true with updating orders too much. Keep in mind what your build costs where and just wait for prices to recover.
Next, let’s have a look at destroyer build costs:
T3 destroyer manufacturing prices
Again, some of the destroyer hulls or profitable to produce and some result in a loss. The build with only partial component build are usually better than building stuff from scratch. Also consider that the screenshot above is only for a specific decriptor. If you use a different one prices will change slightly. Just play around with IPH a bit to find an optimal one.
Finally, the T3 cruiser build costs:
T3 cruiser manufacturing prices
The cruiser build costs are quite surprising, since none of the cruiser builds will result in a profit. I am not sure why this is at the time of writing. Maybe the T3 cruisers are not used as much as in the past anymore and hence there is a bunch of stock from players selling their old unused ships.
Building T3 hulls and subsystems is quite the endgame of manufacturing complexity. There are many options to build your product counting the invention process into the price. On top of that, the market seems to be quite complex too, with big price spikes for certain items.
If you like this complexity, T3 production might be an activity that is challenging and will keep you busy figuring out for quite a bit.